Tech Talk Q and A
With the world of technology unfolding right before her journalistic eye, Nellie Bowles ’06 may have a slightly different view of what endures than most. The former editor of El Batidor, a graduate of Columbia University and a Fulbright Scholar, Bowles moved swiftly into her career as a technology reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle before she was scooped up by the recently launched Re/Code, a smart and sassy tech publication that publishes only digitally from its San Francisco headquarters. Sarah Kidwell caught up with Bowles (electronically, of course) in between deadlines for some insight into her beat.
You’re covering a world that moves with warp speed, and I’m guessing that it makes your work both exciting and a bit unnerving. How does it feel to you?
The tech boom (this whole mosh pit of startups and venture capitalists) is the most interesting thing happening in the U.S. right now, far as I can tell. It’s the weirdest. It’s the most influential. And it’s the fastest paced. So it’s absolutely exciting to cover.
Also, let’s be real, I do feature stories rather than breaking news (I write about 3-5 stories a week rather than 15, like some of my colleagues), so I have a bit of a more leisurely pace with it all.
How do you stay connected to what is current and up-and-coming?
I’m secretly a very old woman who thinks a good night out is pinot noir and a Caesar salad, so “staying hip and current” does not come naturally, but I actually see this as a very good thing. I like to think I approach the youths and their apps and activities like an archeologist.
The key is to keep people of all ages in your life and to listen to them. I have younger cousins and little sister (Charlotte ’12) who keep me in the loop on things and who taught me what Snapchat is, etc.
I also read a lot. I don’t Tweet as much as I should, but I consume most of my news on Twitter. I read Buzzfeed and Gawker and Vice pretty religiously. I also get the Times and the New Yorker and like to keep in touch with the legacy publications.
Are Tweeting, Instagramming, and posting video part of your job description?
They are! As it ought to be, even if I’m not a good Tweeter. Basically the job description is to use all the tools you can to tell good stories. So I take some of my own shaky-hand video. I take my own pictures and also work with our staff photog. I work with Recode’s partners at NBC to bring TV elements to stories. We’re starting a radio show. A modern reporter is a multimedia creature, so it’s definitely part of the job.
Keep us up with your travels – you’ve been to Burning Man, Las Vegas, Silicon Valley tech campuses and more. Would you describe any of those as the most interesting story you’ve covered?
Burning Man was probably the most interesting week of reporting for me. I drove out to the desert and had to file every day without really knowing what I would cover or how it would go or, importantly, where I could get Internet. But I think it was the best week of writing I’d done in my career so far. It’s a great event to cover because it’s this huge, idealistic, colorful festival now flush with money and influence, so there really are infinite stories.
Do you get to write all the funny, irreverent headlines for your stories (e.g. Cuddle Puddles! Still Joy in the Mud-Ville at Burning Man; Chicken Tech or Michael Mina Builds Two-Story Rotisserie), or is that someone else’s job?
Ahahaha. Collaborative effort.
The tech industry is largely male, and often young – do you have some insights on when we might see some changes there?
The gender issues in tech are an absolute horror show and getting worse, as far as I can tell. The pipeline of women coming into tech is drying up: The number of women studying computer science continues to drop every year. But of course a lot of people are making great efforts to change this. I’ve reported on it quite a bit and hope to do more. I think reporters just have to keep forcing the issue up again and again and eventually we’ll see change.
From your vantage point, are there tech trends with sticking power?
I think the idea of “tech” is going to fade. My theory – which I steal from one of my editors – is that internet now is like the early days of electricity, and one day we won’t think talk about it, it’ll just be all around us and expected. And we won’t refer to companies as “tech” startups just because they use the internet to deliver services. So in a journalism way: The real estate reporter should be the one covering Airbnb, not the tech reporters. Because Airbnb is not a tech company. It’s a real estate company.
What endures from your time at Cate?
I was editor of the El Bat and The Cate Review, two experiences that absolutely shaped who I am today. I was obsessed with that paper and basically lived in the Bat Cave my senior year. I remember we introduced all these fun lowbrow features like blind dates and formal dinner fashion, which I just loved.
But really what sticks with me from Cate were the teachers and the advice they gave and how they nurtured a really special culture of writing at Cate.
I didn’t really know that I was a writer until they helped me realize it, and their ambition for me shaped my own ambition for myself.
Although the Bulletin now has a digital platform too (ISSUU), this interview will land in a printed magazine and will be snail-mailed to alumni, parents, and friends of Cate. Is this format doomed, or will magazines and newspapers endure, in your view?
Eh. Doomed and not doomed. I like to get the New Yorker in print, and some of my friends started a beautiful new magazine called The California Sunday. People like objects. So magazines will probably stick around because they’re nice to have.
Newspapers, no way. As soon as something’s printed, it’s already old news.
Where, in this digital world, do you keep the things that really matter to you?
On backup hard drives.
This interview appeared in the Fall 2014 edition of the Cate School Bulletin. Bowles is now a reporter for The New York Times.
